Conclusion: The rise of the micropolitan newspaper

This is the final part of a series on super-healthy newspapers in 2019. Where they are, who they are, how they do it, and why they matter.

The super-success of daily newspapers in resort towns - Jackson Hole and Vail - are easy to write off as ultra-rich market-related flukes. But there are too many print-centric success stories in small towns across the country to leave it at that. 

At the base of the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire, Mark Guerringue has been publishing free daily newspapers, micro-dailies as he calls them, for twenty years.

This year, his flagship property, the Conway Daily Sun, suddenly started to grow -nearly 10 percent year over year. 

North Conway has a  population of about 10,000 and the newspaper has a circulation of 16,000 also covering four neighboring towns. 

A gruff-talking New Hampshirite and no-bullshit kind of guy, Guerringue is old school. 

The Conway Sun refrigerator (he plans to donate it to the Newseum) is signed in Sharpie by generations of presidential hopefuls - and a few presidents - who stopped in to pitch for an early endorsement. 

He’s not quite sure what happened this year. Another paper he owns, Laconia Daily Sun, in a larger and more prosperous area - one of  Politicom’s top ten strongest micropolitan economies in 2018 - was expected to grow. It was started ten years later, and about 25% of its revenues are tourism-related. The local office buzzes with activity from incoming phone and email ad orders. 

But the Conway Daily Sun, in a smaller, sleepier community, is two decades old and considered mature with a healthy margin on revenues of about $3.5 million.

For the last six years, revenues have been mostly flat. The Great Recession of 2008 depleted the revenue base by about 10%, national advertising has almost disappeared and inserts continue on a downward slide. 

It’s hard to put his finger on the reason the paper is growing again this year. 

Part the secret sauce, he thinks, is simply being the only publication in town and a slight uptick in the local economy. 

He also thinks free circulation helps. One of his favorite sayings about the paper’s success is that "quite by accident, the Sun was internet-ready: Free and local." 

Less trackable is an improvement in the editorial product. 

“Last year we hired an editor who had spent 20 years at the Palm Beach Post. The stories are tighter. If you pick up a paper that is 28 pages, there is a lot of new stuff in it.”

In the latest Better Newspaper Contest produced by the New Hampshire Press Association, The Conway Daily Sun took first place in General Excellence, beating out the much larger Concord Monitor and Union Leader for the state's most prestigious journalism award. Guerringue’s son, Brett, who works at the paper, won rookie journalist of the year. 

“Awards don’t mean that much,” Guerringue said. “It can be just who likes what.” 

But still, he thinks massive consolidation and gutted newsrooms have hurt the competition.

“I ran into an editor in Dover whose staff used to be 75 and now it’s eight. We have as big a staff as that paper.” The Foster Daily in Dover is owned by Gatehouse, which has since merged with Gannett, teeing up another round of massive lay-offs. 

“People have approached us to start a newspaper there.”

The Concord Moniker and Union Leader have also gutted their newsrooms, he said. 

While a hawk on local news, Guerringue is a dove when it comes to digital transformation. 

“Conway is unabashedly print,” Guerringue says. “If you Google us, Our tagline is Seeking the truth and printing it.” 

I Googled it, and sure enough, that’s what it says:

There are, of course, a couple of high margin new products that help: a glossy Best of Conway magazine with a six-month distribution life, and a revenue-producing home and cannabis show purchased a couple of years ago. 

“Every time we start heading into digital we find another project which has better revenues. Maybe we were too early in the game, but we've tried selling digital services, everything from web sites to programmatic banner ads, but nothing has moved the needle very much.” 

Guerringue also thinks local leadership is important. For the past few years, he was out of town a lot, distracted by a start-up and acquisition in nearby Portland, Maine. After these ventures came to an end, he has been in town more often, talking to editors and customers. 

“The papers that work have a publisher who is committed and connected to the community.” 

Ironically for an unabashedly “print guy,”  the biggest challenge in the future may be the printing press. It is getting old.

“It's a perfect storm of obsolescence,” says Guerringue. "Pressmen are hard to find as it is a dying profession. So are parts for our old press and pre-press equipment, and on top of that there are fewer and fewer press mechanics to install the parts even if you can find them.” That means deciding whether or not to take on the investment of a new press. 

Even in Conway, the future of “Finding the news and printing it” is never a given. 

So after interviewing numerous unicorns - i.e., print-centric success stories in the newspaper industry, what lessons did we learn about local media?

It’s clear that the market matters. Growing economies do better than waning economies, and small markets have unique qualitative advantages beyond the lack of broadcast competition.

Among these is the sense of “local identity” that larger, more transient areas fail to engender.  As I was researching, a local realtor commented that he did not read the local paper here because he did not really care who wrecked a car or went missing in Clearwater, ten miles away. He relies on national media for news. 

People like their neighborhood news, and that that’s just not possible in a larger city. 

My own take on the more economic nuances includes the whole dollar sensitivity of SMB’s that favors smaller papers. 

SMB’s in Northern California where I ran a group of weeklies were willing to pay $250 to $300 for a quarter page in the community weekly, even if the circulation was 6,000, but unwilling to pay for a $2,500 for a quarter page in the 60,000 circulation Metro Silicon Valley based in San Jose. 

However, there is something else that everyone agrees is hard to put their finger on, or for a writer to divide into a listicle.  

The publishers I talked to were hyper-focused, not on cost-cutting, but on objectives.

They know when to take a pass or fight for a new initiative based on simple, clear criteria. They do not need a retreat to tell themselves what business they are in. 

All are frugal, but none are focused on cost-cutting. Rather they were driving forward on increasing audience (which means content) and revenues. Revenue initiatives that do not build the core - content and audience - needed to meet a high ROI standard to make the cut. 

Diversification is not a high priority goal but remains on the radar. Most have one big high margin event. 

No one talks much about advertising systems and standards of performance. The formula for the newspaper seems to be the driver of sales. 

They are passionate. I’ve been interviewing publishers for ten years now - and these small market publishers are stands outs not only in their clarity on criteria but also in their almost messianic sense of purpose. They believe in local news and the purpose of the newspaper. 

In fact, they are surprisingly aggressive. Adams is starting dailies and expanding into McClatchy territory. Swift publishers are launching online visitor guides. Conway’s publisher has recently hired a top-notch editor and bought a local home and cannabis show. No one is coasting or asleep at the wheel on Main Street.

Finally, there is this: The outliers all considered family-ownership to be part of their superpowers.

All of them think the mass consolidation is hurting local media with its one size fits all markets: centralize, automate and cut. 

Maybe there is something for equity markets to learn from family-owned community newspaper publishers about how value is created.